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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Vatican City, October 2015 (VIS) –
The role of the woman in the family, in society and in the Church,
cultural differences, concerns regarding ethics in medicine, the
situation of persecuted Christian families and the testimonies of
those engaged in family catechesis were main themes of the
interventions by auditors in the Synod Hall during the general
congregations of Thursday 15 and Friday 16 October, published today.

The national president of the Catholic
Women Organisation in Nigeria, Agnes Offiong Erogunaye, reminded the
Synod Fathers that African women are known for taking care of their
families with or without the contributions of their spouses, and the
Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria indicates the strength and role of
“a typical woman and mother determined to keep her family together
in the face of helplessness and calamity”. She added, “From my
experience with women in this difficult moment, I can boldly say that
although the man is the head of the family, the woman is however the
heart of the family, and when the heart stops beating the family dies
because the foundation is shaken and the stability destroyed. In
Nigeria, Catholic women are not just homebuilders. They are a strong
force to be reckoned with when it comes to spirituality and economy,
and growth in the Church”.

Sister Maureen Kelleher from the United
States of America quoted the paragraph in the Instrumentum laboris
that states, “The Church must instil in families a sense of 'we' in
which no member is forgotten. Everyone ought to be encouraged to
develop their skills and accomplish their personal plan of life in
service of the Kingdom of God”. She called upon the Church, “my
family”, to “live up to the challenge to instil in our family the
Church a sense of 'we', to encourage each person – male or female –
to develop their skills to serve the Kingdom of God”. She added, “I
ask our Church leaders to recognise how many women who feel called to
be in service of the Kingdom of God but cannot find a place in our
Church. Gifted though some may be, they cannot bring their talents to
the tables of decision making and pastoral planning. They must go
elsewhere to be of service in building the Kingdom of God. In 1974,
at the Synod on Evangelisation, one of our sisters, Margaret Mary,
was one of two nuns appointed from the Union of Superiors General.
Today, forty years later, we are three”.

“The Church needs to listen to women
… as only in reciprocal listening does true discernment function”,
emphasised Lucetta Scaraffia, professor of Modern History at the
University of Rome. “Women are great experts in the family: leaving
abstract theories behind, we can turn in particular to women to
understand what must be done, and how we can lay the foundations for
a new family open to respect for all its members, no longer based on
the exploitation on the capacity for sacrifice of the woman, but
instead ensuring emotional nourishment and solidarity for all.
Instead, both in the text and in the contributions very little is
said about women, about us. As if mothers, daughters, grandmothers,
wives – the heart of families – were not a part of the Church, of
the Church who encompasses the world, who thinks, who decides. As if
it were possible to continue, even in relation to the family,
pretending that women do not exist. As if it were possible to
continue to forget the new outlook, the previously unheard-of and
revolutionary relationship that Jesus had with women”.

“Families throughout the world are
very diverse, but in all of them the women play the most important
and decisive role in guaranteeing that their solidity and duration.
And when we speak about families, we should not speak always and only
about marriage. There is a growing number of families composed of a
single mother and her children. It is almost always women who stay by
their children's side, even when they are ill, disabled or afflicted
by violence. These women and mothers have seldom followed courses in
theology, and often they are not even married, but they offer an
admirable example of Christian behaviour. If you, Synod Fathers, do
not pay attention to them, if you do not listen to them, you risk
making them feel even more disgraced as their family is so different
to the one you focus on. Indeed, you talk too readily of an abstract
family, a perfect family that does not exist, a family that has
nothing to do with the real families Jesus encountered or spoke
about. Such a perfect family would almost seem not to be in need of
His mercy or His Word: 'I have not come to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance'”.

The issue of mixed marriages also
attracted attention, as mentioned by Rev. Fr. Garas Boulos Garas
Bishay, pastor of St. Mary of Peace in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, who
expressed his concern for a socio-cultural phenomenon widespread in
tourist areas such as that of his parish: “mixed marriages between
Christian girls and women from Russia and Europe, with Muslim boys
and men (indeed, Islamic Shariah only allows Muslim men to marry
women of other religions and never the contrary). Certainly this
phenomenon, along with the mass demographic shift and a growing
number of refugees and migrants who tend to settle in Europe, does
not only affect countries with an Islamic majority or tourist areas,
but will inevitably also affect the West and is therefore worthy of
study and serious consideration. These are families with mixed morals
and a dual cultural and religious affiliation. … It should not be
forgotten that Islamic law permits polygamy and the Koran obliges the
parents to the provide an Islamic education for the children. There
is a profoundly different cultural and religious anthropology that
may easily give rise to serious crises within the couple, even
leading to irreparable fractures and grave consequences for the
children”.

Maria Harries, Chair of Catholic Social
Services in Australia, also spoke about cultural diversity, providing
the example of the very marginalised Aboriginal people, which
comprise many language groups and family traditions. “For most of
them, the idea of the family as it is represented by our Church
teaching is alien. For some, the matrilineal system means that they
have many mothers. The child is reared in a kinship group, not by a
mother and father. Women play a dynamic role in their kinship world
and they expect them to be visible. In the words of one of the
aboriginal leaders, 'By not having women visible on the Altar and in
the life of the Church, we are concealing our mothers, our sisters
and our daughters from view'. In welcoming the Gospel, they ask not
to be recolonised by our Church as they have been by our nation's
forebears. The challenge for our Church is to formally and
institutionally incorporate cross-cultural dialogue and adopt systems
with indigenous Australians that honour and do not violate their
culture”.

Harries, who has worked for forty years
with people who have experienced sexual abuse in the family and for
the last twenty with those who have been abused by members of the
clergy, affirmed that “all sexual abuse is connected to the abuse
of power. … The horrific evidence of abuse of children in families
and institutions and our failure to respond adequately to this has
left the Church in Australia and of course elsewhere in very deep
pain. … In the words of Pope Francis, as we all pray for and
'receive the grace of shame', we need local and collective ways of
meeting all these victims and their families and each other in our
garden of agony and to listen deeply, very deeply. From our failings
and the accompanying pain, we have the opportunity to learn
collectively and perhaps even doctrinally, and to re-engage with and
accompany the thousands of families whom we have lost”.

Brenda Kim Nayoug spoke of what is
referred to in South Korea as the “Sampo generation”, or rather,
the generation that chooses to forego courtship, marriage and
childbirth. “Many of the young generation have given up these three
things because of their social pressures and economic problems. There
are so many young people who are suffering due to unemployment, they
unfortunately postpone their marriage, and forget that marriage is a
calling given by God. Dear Fathers”, she exclaimed, “married life
is a long journey. There might be lots of possibilities to get lost
or to be wounded on their journey of life, therefore the Church
should open up and truly accompany us at the various stages of our
married life, so that we do not give up but instead find for
ourselves the beauty of the Christian family”.

A recurrent theme in the interventions
was that of married sexuality and ethics in medicine. The Peruvian
paediatrican Edgar Humberto Tejada Zeballos remarked that “there
are couples who believe that having a child is a right, without
considering that children are a gift from God, and resort to measures
that aside from violating morality, cost innocent lives, such as in
vitro fertilisation, in which many embryos are eliminated, burned,
frozen or sold. They also consider practices such as surrogacy and
other means that … denying morality, cause the sacrifice of a great
number of embryos without mercy or use them in experiments. Holy
Father, I believe that in the working document, in paragraphs 140 and
141 these threats to life and to the family could be mentioned
clearly, to transmit this knowledge to many Christians who commit
these immoral acts out of ignorance”.

Massimo and Patrizia Paloni, a married
couple from Rome and members of the Neocatechumenal Way, are the
parents of twelve children and are currently in mission in Holland to
announce the Gospel to the “existential peripheries of Europe”.
They expressed their gratitude to Paul VI for the encyclical Humanae
Vitae, which helped them understand that “responsible parenthood is
not about deciding the number of children, but rather about being
aware of the greatness of the vocation to collaborate with God in the
creation of sons and daughters for eternity”, adding that “every
day around us we see suffering, separations, abortions, and lonely
people without hope. The world is awaiting the witness of the
Christian family, and we are convinced that the salvation of humanity
is through the Christian family. … The Christian community saves
the family, and the family saves the Church”.

Sister Berta Maria Porras Fallas of
Costa Rica insisted on the need for formation for “vocational
realisation”, and proposed three priorities in youth pastoral
ministry. “First, love in discernment, with the themes of formation
for discernment and discerning the mission. Secondly, loving as a
couple, man and woman, with the analysis of current issues. And
finally, loving as sexual giving, with the theme of human sexuality
as a gift, conjugal love and daring to love”.

Finally, the Marqus-Odeesho couple, on
behalf of families in Iraq, told how the Christians of Nineveh have
found themselves having to leave their homes, jobs, memories,
possessions and schools overnight. “The new experience was very
harsh”, they said. “Only the words of our Lord Jesus in the
Gospel of Matthew – 'Blessed are those who are persecuted because
of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven' – condole us
and relieve our wounds; thus we started to hear testimonies of some
displaced families giving their experience, saying that despite the
suffering and harshness of displacement, getting closer to the Church
helped them lot and they started to feel that their faith was
strengthening and maturing, and they began sharing in spiritual
activities. … Today the challenges continue through events such as
kidnapping, bombing, robbery and terror. But in spite of this
situation there are still many families who are committed to their
land and their Church, giving testimony to their faith without
realising that this persecution will bring a lot of good to the
Church of Christ, as it did for the early Church, in spreading the
good news”.